sent him a full suit of rubber clothes. For all that, this elastic
gum was for the most part only a curiosity, and few people knew
there was such a thing.

About the year 1770, a black, bouncing ball of caoutchouc, as the
Indians called the gum, after many travels found its way to
England, and Priestley, the man who gave us oxygen, learned that
it would rub out pencil marks. Then and there he named it what you
have probably guessed long before this: "rub-ber." Nearly every
language except English uses in place of the word rubber some form
of the native Word "caoutchouc," which means "weeping tree." After
Priestley's discovery, a one-inch "rubber" sold for three
shillings, or about seventy-five cents, but artists were glad to
pay even that price, because their work was made so much easier.





CHAPTER 2

CHARLES GOODYEAR


In 1800 Brazil was the only country manufacturing rubber articles,
and her best market soon proved to be North America. Probably the
first rubber this country saw was brought to New England in
clipper ships as ballast in the form of crude lumps and balls.
Rubber shoes, water-bottles, powder-flasks, and tobacco-pouches
found buyers in the American ports, but rubber shoes were most in